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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I’ve worked for startups too; everyone does everything all at the same time! Let the chaos reign! But it is fun in its own way.

    I work for a large company now after the startup I worked for was acquired. Hierarchy, bureaucracy, layers, we’ve got it all. For worse and for better though, it allows me to focus and specialize on what I’m awesome at and furgeddaboddit (ahem! delegate) the stuff that I suck at to those who excel at those tasks.


  • No, this is incompetent management.

    Senior engineers write enabling code/scaffolding, and review code, and mentor juniors. They also write feature code.

    Lead engineers code and lead dev teams.

    Principal engineers code, and talk about tech in meetings.

    Senior Principal engineers, and distinguished technologists/fellows talk about tech, and maybe sometimes code.

    Good managers go to meetings and shield the engineers from the stream of exec corporate bs. Infrequently they may rope any of the engineers in this chain in to explain the decisions that the engineers make along the way.

    Bad managers bring engineers in to these meetings frequently.

    Terrible managers make the engineering decisions and push those to the engineers.












  • I won a free LASIK in a contest from the local newspaper. The surgeon’s practice office manager tried to claim that the prize was a free single eye (effectively buy one get one free) but the way the contest prize statement was phrased made it very clear that it was both. We mutually decided to cash-value the prize at 0.75 because I decided there’s no way I want a pissed-off surgeon pointing a laser at my eyes. In exchange, I signed a 5 year NDA about the whole thing—that was about 7 years ago.

    Used the cash for a down payment on an awesome car, instead. That’s my story on how I got my Tesla. The company’s frontman is a massive douche but the car is freaking awesome.


  • I’m a Linux user and fan for a lot of years now. Software engineer by profession.

    It’s not ready for widespread adoption to the less tech-savvy masses.

    It misses some functionality that is really hard to get right but is absolutely expected to get right. For example: graceful suspend and wakeups. It happens so often even to me that I close my Linux laptop for the day, next morning open it up to a bunch of warnings and error messages about Bluetooth adapters or whatever the device of the day that wants to malfunction is that prevents a sound S2 S3 sleep.

    I don’t get freaked out about it. But grandma sure would. And yet my 10 year old MacBook Pro gets it right every single fucking time; completely flawlessly. This is the bar of usability that Linux has to achieve for widespread adoption as a true, polished, personal computing experience.

    edit: meant S3 sleep.